Protect Your Home from Flooding & Water Damage

Protect Your Home from Flooding & Water Damage

Just one heavy rainstorm can turn your bedroom, kitchen or freshly finished basement into a moldy swamp. GE Generator Systems recommends following the below steps to prevent flooding and save your home from expensive-to-repair water damage:

Avoid Flooding with Preventative Maintenance

Home flooding can be dodged with simple flood prevention measures and preventative maintenance. Clean gutters as trees blossom in the spring and after leaves fall in the autumn to avoid blocked gutters that yield foundation cracks and basement flooding. Make surethat rain gutters point away from your home so that water doesn’t saturate the ground immediately around your house.

Install a Sump Pump

A sump pump is a pump used to remove water that has collected through perimeter drains of a basement waterproofing system. Installing an automatic sump pump will keep water leakage caused by normal rainfall, from accumulating in the basement. Backup sump pump systems are also available and are battery-operated. These home waterproofing measures begin working if the main pump is out of commission and reduce the risk of flood damage.

Inspect Your Home During the Storm

Determine the grading or slope of your property— how the angle of the ground circulates water around your home. If water tends to accumulate on your property or street during seasonally normal rain and snow, talk to a landscaper, excavation contractor, your county planner or environmental services department.

Purchase Flood Insurance

Typical homeowners insurance protects your house from wind but not flood damage. Avoid an insurance disaster—and losing all the time and money you have put into renovating your new basement home office or playroom—with a flood insurance policy.

Get a Backup Power solution

Standby generators help provide even more flood protection, keeping your power on and your sump pump running throughout inclement weather. A backup generator automatically detects when utility power is lost and automatically starts up, ensuring that key appliances run through outages. New GE home generators have the option to come with sophisticated Infohub™ power monitoring systems that inform you when your home has lost power, when it returns, and when your generator needs maintenance to keep your house afloat through stormy weather. Infohub™ is convenient for homeowners with affordable monthly or yearly subscription fees, and allows you to monitor the status of your home during a storm, even when you aren’t there.